I HE IRON BAR 1047 tialJt of Communism, Red Robinson wanted to destroy it because of the treacheries and oppressions it had condoned. He himself had wanted to shake it off, as a morbid, mediaeval superstition, hurtful to free spirits, like a clammy miasma I And all this while Old Geard was working his miracles by its aid; but casually, carelessly, almost indifferently; as if he had discovered that the whole Grail Quest were a mere by-product of some vast planet- ary reservoir of an unknown force. Oh, dear! His thoughts had become too analytical, too con- crete ; and his good moment was gone. With a shrug of his shoul- ders he turned the handle, entered the Tribunal, and ran upstairs to the orderly rooms from which Glastonbury was now ruled. When Mr. Evans arrived at his shop after his interview with Miss Crow by the railings of the Cattle Market he found his part- ner, Mr. Jones, extremely excited by the quantity of foreigners there were that day in the town, and bent upon devoting the whole day to a lively concentration upon their business. "I know better than thee can know what these Continentals re- quire, seeing as I've lived in Glaston afore thee was born," per- sisted the old man, "and the best thing thee can do is to bring up a pile of they books out of basement and put 'em in windy. Them Germans and Rooshians be more for books than they be for bricky-brack." Mr. Evans struggled out of his tight overcoat, making porten- tous grimaces as he pulled at its sleeves, hung it up on a nail at the back of the shop and rubbing his face with both his hands, prepared to do what his partner bade him. He had taken good care since his marriage to avoid that descent into his Avernus but the human mind is so constructed that when he received this point-blank push from his business confederate, a hundred rea- sons sprang up like a hundred sly lawyers, each of them full of subtle arguments why he should do- what the old man bade him to do. This was the third little breeze that had helped far- ward that day his gulf-stream of evil! His high spirits that morning had been largely due to the fact that he had just arrived, iji his Life of Merlin, at the beginning of